What type of data compression involves truncating the first few bits of a piece of data?

Question

We learned about data compression in my class last week and I'm confused about a certain strategy.

My teacher showed us an example where he truncated 8-bit characters by cutting off the first 5 bits, which were all zeros.

A is 0000 0100 which is truncated to 100
B is 0000 0010 which is truncated to 010
The last one is 0000 0011 which is truncated to 011

What type of data compression is this?

It's probably called "using only the bits you need"? (Assuming there is only at most 2^3 distinct values) — Mats Petersson, May 17 '18 at 05:54

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 17 '18 at 18:11

I've been having trouble getting answers to any questions related to data structures. I used to get plenty of responses with language-specific questions when I was studying C++. . .

Anyway, I found the answer on this page:

https://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Fixed_Bit_Length_Encoding

It's called fixed bit-length encoding.

What type of data compression involves truncating the first few bits of a piece of data?

1 Answers1